Light rain. A large bumblebee buzzes past. The phoebe keeps making his sorties from the ring of old fencing around a volunteer red oak seedling, which no doubt appreciates the extra fertilizer.
red oak
Wind and clouds and the clattering of treetops rocking out of sync. Two squirrels hunting the last unfallen acorns keep climbing into the top branches of a big red oak, hanging by their hind legs to peel their prizes.
Heavy frost in the yard. A few, faint clouds disappear after sunrise, as squirrels climb high into the wine-red crowns of oaks.
Clear, cold and still. I can’t stop gazing at the red oak seedling I found in the yard yesterday and immediately caged in a ring of deer fencing, its four jaunty leaves above a sea of invasive periwinkle.
Cool, clear and humid at sunrise. I watch a crow family waking up on their roost in an oak, the fledglings softly begging from the adults, who stretch and scratch.
Under a monochrome cloud cover, all the earth tones of blossoming oaks and birches, catkins alive to the lightest brush of a breeze.
Clear and cool at sunrise, with ovenbirds calling in the woods and a red-winged blackbird in the meadow. Two squirrels climb high into the canopy to taste the oak blossoms.
Dawn. High in a red oak crown an acorn lets go, tapping the branches on its way down like a blind man’s cane.
Breezy and cool at mid-morning. A blue jay’s rusty croon in the crown of an oak. The plop of dropped acorns.
A hair above freezing. A pair of jays fresh from their ablutions ascend a flaming birch, gleaning insects on their way to the oaks.
Clouds gravid with rain at sunrise. A wood thrush calls quietly. In the top of the tallest oak, a squirrel’s silhouette begins its descent.
After last night’s rain, the sun keeps not coming out. Up in the woods, a breeze in the top of one red oak makes a sudden shower.
A few, tiny patches of snow linger behind clumps of dead stiltgrass. The sun blazes through the thinning crown of an oak; I start to sneeze.
All the birds are calling and then they’re not. I’m remembering a big oak that stood at the woods’ edge when I was a kid—no trace of it now.